Earlier this year I decided it was time to finally get around to creating a personal blog. This has been a goal for a while, but was always hard to make the time.
I could have just purchased a cheap WordPress blog hosting plan somewhere and started blogging, but where is the fun in that? I decided to go another route.
I work with AWS cloud services on a regular basis for my day job. I decided it would be a nice challenge to see if I could set up a simple blog using mainly AWS free tier offerings (to keep costs low). It would likely be hard to do it with 100% free tier offerings, but figured I might be able to get it close.
So what is my exact budget? Well, it would be great to keep things less than a cheap WordPress blog hosting plan, so setting a rough budget of $10.00 per month (and yes, I know you can get WordPress hosting plans even cheaper than that).
I decided to make this into a blogging series named "Blog on a Budget" (BoB for short). In this case, "budget" meaning "on the cheap".
Anyway, I don't have an exact plan for the structure of this series, but it will generally follow these topics:
Since you are reading this on my blog, you already know I have had some success in getting things up-and-running.
How close am I to my goal currently? Well, I have a GitOps-based deployment solution in place and the site is currently costing ~$0.50 per month. I expect that to increase as I add features, but I am reasonably happy with where things are so far.
As time permits, I plan to release some open-source versions of the code for this site. These will be versions that have been cleaned up for generic consumption, so there might be some lag between the related post and having open-source code that people can look at and use.
Anyway, if you find this series interesting, let me know and I will do more like it in the future.
In the meantime, enjoy this blog series about building a blog on a budget 😀
WARNING: If you are new to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and AWS free tier offerings, please know that, by default, there are no protections in place for crossing over the line from free to paid. Proceed with caution whenever working with AWS free tier services and understand where the free tier ends and paid tiers begin. Also, make sure you set up budgets as one of the first things you do when configuring a new account.
I will keep this list updated as I add posts to the series.
DISCLAIMER: No AWS services were harmed in the creation of this website...misused?...maybe...but not harmed.